description

Cuny Janssen

Cuny Janssen
Yoshino, Japan 2009
analoge kleurenprint, ingelijst met AR-t glas, 70% UV-bestendig /
analogue color print, framed with AR-t glass, 70% UV resistant
100 x 123 cm
ed. 3/6

Detail Description

Cuny Janssen's landscapes capture the unspoilt, sometimes even overwhelming, beauty of nature. They are  governed by universal factors such as light, time, and silence. Most of Janssen's work is produced on her travels, during which her landscape pictures are taken in the same environment in which her portrait subjects live.

Yoshino is a result of Janssen's visit to Japan in autumn of 2009. The photograph highlights the Japanese landscape just as the trees burst into colour. For at least 1400 years, the Yoshino region, in present-day Nara Prefecture, has been considered one of the loveliest parts of Japan. For Janssen, one of its most intriguing attributes is the nature's longevity. No matter what happens, it continues to grow and bloom, just like the mankind itself. At a young age, Cuny Janssen chose to capture beauty in her work. Yet, in Yoshino, alongside its exquisiteness co-exists the untained power of nature's survival.



Cuny Janssen (Nijmegen, 1975) graduated in 2000 from the Academy of Visual Arts in Utrecht. Two years later she won second prize in the Prix de Rome for photography. Since the beggining of her career, Janssen travelled around the world to make portraits of children in their everyday environments, combining these with photographs of the landscape they are surrounded by. So far, Janssen photographs exclusively in colour and manages to capture impulsive moments with an analogue 4 x 5 inch plate camera, which seems like a contradiction. Her photos create a profoundly expressive work about a city or a region and their people.

Her solo exhibition The Binding Factor is currently on view in Museum Kranenburgh (Bergen, NL). Janssen made several award-winning photo books and had solo exhibitions at, among others, The Photographers' Gallery in London (2005), FOAM in Amsterdam (2010), De Pont in Tilburg (2010), SK Stiftung/Die Photografische Sammlung in Cologne (2011), Kunstverein Heilbronn in Heilbronn (2012), Projektraum Fotografie/F2 in Dortmund (2021) and at galleries in Amsterdam, Berlin, Cologne and Johannesburg.